GRUMPY OLD BASTARD HEARS THE RAIN

 

Another all day rainy day. Sprinkles, nowhere near a gully-washer, a soak into the ground kind of rain, the kind that waters everything gently and raises the receding water table. It's a beautiful day with the leaves everywhere glossy reflecting silver sky. The wild violet stems extend straight up, leaf open to receive the damp air, dance when struck by a drop fallen from the tree above. Trees soften the force of the rain hitting the ground like they soften the wind and summer sunlight. I must live at least near, preferably among trees. I've never understood the determined American genocide on trees. I do, but also don't. Money is the answer and the passion for money disregards everything else. Mammon is not a benevolent god. I must go to netflix and bring up that Jeff Goldblum movie, Independence Day. I remember being disappointed by its Hollywood silliness, but also remember it had quite a lot to say. Big alien mining spaceships were killing off everything living and scooping up the earth's crust for the minerals. We  had no defense. They were scooping up everything, already had half the USA and heading this way. Koch Brothers. Exxon. And a long list more. They have the money. They control the economy. The Appalachian chain, source of water for the eastern half of the continent, is being fracked from one end to the other. Our continent is being made into a desert under our feet, the politicians advancing the desolation kept popular among the people by propaganda. When Yellowstone blows, the western half of the US continent will be rendered desert. The eastern half will turn desert without water. No force is powerful enough to reverse this momentum. It will be known on maps as the Great American Desert. Too many people controlling so much money they have bought our government and turned it against us. We'll soon see the military, too. It's documented in the news every day, we're all watching helplessly, hopelessly, not wanting to admit it. Take another happy pill. Burn anothern. Thank you, Jesus.

 

 

I really did not want to go there. It's so ridiculous now, noticing the obvious is called liberal. Pay the least attention to the obvious and you're a liberal. Liberal, BR (Before Reagan), meant something. Left meant something. AR (After Reagan), liberal and left wing mean, admits to observing the obvious. Conservative and right wing mean, buys hate propaganda. Neither side of the artificial divide created by propaganda has anything to say for itself, but plenty to say about hate for the other side and everyone concerned. The economic depression is artificially created. Major corporations are expatriating themselves, like Walgreen moving its offices to Switzerland, to evade paying US taxes for soaking us. The one percent are talking about the ninety-nine percent coming to get them with pitchforks. What arrogance. Delights me that the Worthington coat of arms has pitchforks. Now that we have a party for teabaggers, why not a party for pitchforkers. Only problem is, I want simple, not complicated. How about no party at all. How about I just stop paying attention to the irrelevant. The American political system has rendered itself irrelevant. So why pay it any mind? Why reward ignorance with attention? I can't stop them, can't change them. They have all power over me. So the Supreme Court appoints Sarah Palin president. What can I do? Watch it on tv. I have no power over them, not even recourse. Best thing for me to do is hunker down at home and feed carrots to donkeys, amen. I must clear my head of the garbage. At the same time, the world around me is crumbling, falling apart, breaking down. How can I ignore it? It doesn't touch me here at my donkey meadow, yet. I go into town and see a few people I know and we speak for a few minutes, friendly.

 

 

I remind self the people I live among, the people I know, facebook friends, are my world. The rest of it is a mental construct in my head built with imaginary Legos of false information. Why occupy mind with false information that is propaganda anyway. What do I lose by withdrawing my attention from the false? Nothing. What do I gain from more attention to my immediate surroundings, to the people in my life, to cat and donkeys? Everything. My life. Among the people I know, on my mountain with cat, donkeys, facebook and blogger is where my attention belongs, not feeling hopeless and helpless witnessing democracy go away out in the open and its demise be a popular thing. The water on my mountain has been poisoned by Christmas tree cultivation. The native trout that survived Waterfalls Creek being fished out and DDT runoff several decades ago have been wiped out at last by fake notions about the Christ. What can I do but laugh and go on? I'm glad the water table went down from subdivision use; it dried up my spring so I can't drink poison water from it. The water I drink now comes from a well, a few layers of rock below, but poison nonetheless. They ask why so much cancer is going around, blaming everything except that the water of the eastern half of the USA is poisoned at its source, the springs in the mountains, all up and down the Appalachian chain. Poisoning the water has too much money invested in it to stop. I find it heartening that I don't have a great deal longer. In Homelandia, as it is becoming with our ethical foundations being swept away by the television and affection for money, together, adding up to a great black hole of emptiness in greater American culture. Why do I feel so compelled to pay attention to the false workings of the Death Star that are false at the core? Drama? Am I afraid I'll miss something? Am I seeing history unfold? It's engagingly interesting to look at it as history, though the line must be drawn and adhered to, to keep emotion out of it. How do I do that when I think I care? Educate myself to uncare? Yes. What is it to care about? It doesn't care about me.

 

by constantine manos

a greek portfolio

 

I was trained from childhood up to care about America the Democracy, not Homelandia. Now I have  nothing where my-country-tis-of-thee is concerned. The feeling is something like it must have felt to be Hungarian when the Soviet Union incorporated Hungary. How could Hungarians care when missiles, tank cannons, an entire army and air force were aimed at them? No recourse. Hunker down, let it be. Follow Voltaire's counsel, mind my own garden. I'll shepherd my own flock, tend my donkeys, visit with friends, stay home and pursue my art interests, hold Caterpillar, go on doing what I do, but keep my mind out of the swirling cesspool of false values. Why not give more mind to thinking about the nature of God? It's a subject infinitely interesting, something like sailing; no matter how many years you've done it, how much or what kind of experience you've had, there is always something new to learn. I must lift the sights of my interior world, raise self above paying attention to ignorance, read in scriptures instead. Wouldn't that be a good exercise. Keep a Tao te Ching at hand to open it when I feel the impulse to turn on radio news. Read a verse from Lao Tzu and dwell in it for five minutes. I daresay it is a tempting exercise. It could be done at first when I feel like it, then maybe as an exercise for a day, kind of like stopping smoking a day at a time. Let go of paying attention to propaganda called news, clear my head of it a day at a time. Let it go like a helium balloon, watch it shrink to a pinpoint in blue sky and vanish. What do I care about current history anymore? I'd rather read Henry Miller's Rosy Crucifixion. I'd rather look at pictures in a book of photographs by Constantine Manos, A Greek Portfolio, photographs of rural island people who continue to live the traditional ways. People living so remotely they don't know what is going on in Athens but through rumor, changed to unrecognizable by the time it reaches them, and they really don't want to know. That's what I want to be, a donkey herder in the mountains. I must let go of the interest that holds my ear to the daily soap opera from the dark side and tune attention more to the light side, to poetry, good writing, scriptures, music, rain.

 

color photos by tj worthington

 

 

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DONKEY JACK'S BIG ADVENTURE

jenny and jack

 

This morning I woke with the old-time song playing in my head, Rabbit In a Log, Arnold Spangler singing it with the Laurel Fork Travelers. There's a rabbit in a log and I aint got my dog. How will I get him, I know. I'll get me a briar and twist it in his hair. That's how I'll get him, I know. The song has been in my head all morning. I love it when a good song gets in my head and sticks around. Ralph Stanley and Jimmy Martin recorded together Rabbit In a Log in the late 1960s, Ralph's second album after Carter died. But Arnold Spangler owns the song. He does it the old hillbilly way playing his squawking fiddle and Melvin Felts clucking his banjo. Makes me wet-eyed just to remember them. Lord have mercy, how I love old-time hillbilly music. It's the only music I've heard in my life that makes me cry for the beauty in it. I wept all the way through a Ralph Stanley concert, start to finish, for the beauty in the music. I can't play Stanley Brothers or Ralph Stanley much, their singing is so in line with my vibration, or something, that I weep. Carter Family too. When I'd play Carter Family on the radio show, I couldn't talk between songs for weeping and choking up at the mention of the name of any one of the three. My eyes are damp now just thinking about them. I didn't need to say anything about the Carter Family to any of my listeners. All loved the Carter Family, knew a great many of their songs. Never had to introduce anything. Just let it play, the more songs the merrier. And I sat in the chair and wept. It was the same when I played the Stanley Brothers or Ralph. Baptist hymnals have a considerable number of songs attributed to AP Carter. AP was a severely nerdy mountain boy in the time before WW1, who never got into fights, didn't run with the boys, but took all day long walks along the railroad track singing. He had a tremor in his voice the other kids made fun of and he quit school to get away from them. It's the tremor in his voice that makes his vocals AP Carter's alone.  

 

 

jack

 

Their story is told in a wonderful biography of the Carter Family, Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?, told in such a way that when it's over you feel like these are people you have known. Somehow, it brings them to life. And a wonderful autobiography by Ralph Stanley, Man of Constant Sorrow. He took that old, old forgotten song, recorded it and it, too, was forgotten. Then that silly movie about hillbillies, O Brother, and Dan Tyminski's version of Man of Constant Sorrow made the song immensely popular. Then it was discovered that Ralph Stanley has been singing it all along. Ralph Stanley, in his old age, began to get attention and big royalties since the movie made his song so popular. A rock version of the song has been made by the Charm City Devils. They have a great hard-metal version of it on utube that makes me want to see them in concert so bad I may find a way to drive to Johnson City, Tennessee, Aug 26, to see them the closest they'll come to here. I'm ready for another concert. I need a good rock concert every now and again. Looks like a two to two and a half hour drive, same as to Charlotte, Roanoke or Greensboro, the places I have to go to for a concert anyway. But it is so great to drive less than twenty miles to see Ralph Stanley in a place where only hillbillies go, the people who love him in their hearts, and bring out the people homebound in wheelchairs, the people whose bodies are out of control twisted up in knots, strapped into a wheelchair, faces glowing with joy. And the people around them regard them the same as if they're ok. His voice is the voice of the soul of these mountains. He sings in the old Primitive Baptist style like Aretha Franklin sings in black gospel style. I'm not an autograph seeker, don't care about them, but I carried my copy of his book to a concert and asked him to sign it. Only his name. It is one of my book treasures that will not leave this house as long as I'm living. Loaned books never come back. I love that book from my soul. Books are too easy to find on amazon for me to be a lending library. Most recent one I loaned had with it the stipulation I really do want it back. I'll never see it again. It's gone forever. Nobody knows what happened to it. It just went poof, vanished into infinite space. I've found a used copy on amazon to replace it, but would prefer my own copy. The book, itself, doesn't matter as much as the trust that was broken. Trust has a way of not coming back when it's broken, like fine china. Glue doesn't fix it.

 

jenny and jack

 

Talking on the phone this morning with Carole, I saw Jack walk by the windows exploring my territory. I jumped off the phone in a hurry, picked up 4 carrots from refrigerator, went out the door calling to Jack. I did not know what to do. I thought carrot might be an attraction for him. Not. He was on an adventure. I followed him talking to him like I do, called him by name, keeping him knowing I'm behind him and aware of him. He was walking along my rock walkway to the parking lot for one, sniffing every rock. I let him take his time, have his adventure, hoping a car would not drive by and scare him. He was smelling my footprints, Caterpillar's and the possums that walk around here at night picking up bird feeder leavings. He was exploring my meadow he sees across the fence, knows it's the meadow I live in like I see the meadow he lives in. I walk into his meadow. Why not Jack walk into my meadow? I was a bit anxious, because a car always goes by when you don't want it to, even if only three cars go up the road in a day. I didn't want Jack to feel my anxiety. I wanted him to feel that I was walking with him, having a stroll. He sniffed his way along, pulled up some jewelweed and snacked on it, tried some grass, pulled up some plantain, chewed it some and spit it out. He was in a place he'd only seen from the fence. He was up close to the car he sees me ride by in. I honk at them when I drive by the meadow and holler out an open window, Donkey. Today was Jack's first experience with the car up close, to walk by it, smell it, smell the ground around it. He put a front hoof on the pavement and I thought, Oh no, let's not go walking on the road. The new surface, asphalt, his first time feeling it, he pulled his hoof back and would not step on it again.

 

jack

 

Jack made a turn toward the grass in the tracks that lead to the gate to the other meadow. I thought maybe he was heading that way. No. He turned around and walked back to the stone walkway with intent, walked past me holding a carrot, taking no interest. He walked back to the gate like he was in a hurry. He walked to the gate and it didn't move as easily as the other way. It spooked him. He walked a ways to the left and grazed in a jewelweed patch. I gave Jenny some carrot. I went through the gate, left it open and walked out into the meadow along their trail with Jenny following. Jack watched us go away into the distance. He stepped through the gate and came running, ran by us with a big smile on his face like he was having a great time. I gave carrots to Jenny, Jack came around for a carrot. Jack got too close, Jenny swung her ass end around on me, quick as a cat, and I hollered, Jen! She calmed down, I stepped out of her range and said, I'm going to my barn. They went at each other, slinging their heads around each other's necks, donkey martial arts sparring. They even raised their front legs high off the ground, standing on their back legs like pictures of rearing horses. It was beautiful. Their teeth were bared, they came down and Jack went into domination mode. Jenny ran, Jack behind her with his chin on her rump, her kicking him in the chest and neck, running. She came to a flat place by the creek and he ran up, took hold of the back of her neck and walked her where he wanted her to go. She broke free and he took hold of her again, took the fire right out of her. He let her go, they pretend tussled a short bit and both went to grazing. I replaced the baling twine I use to hold the gate closed. It was from last winter and is getting rotten, breaks easy. No problem. Easily replaced. I love the ratty old gate too much to put up another one. The wooden frame is all rotted, none of it would hold a nail, but the wire mesh holds it all together. It looks like it would fall apart from just touching it. I like about it that it's a soft gate, a gentle gate. It was old when I was new.  

 

jenny scratching on the gate

 

 

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MYSTERY IN THE DONKEY MEADOW

Something creepy has taken up close to the house. I think it is in a patch of ironweed just below the donkey shed. This morning Jack was running toward me from the other end of the meadow. He suddenly looked over to the ironweed patch and steered away, changed his direction, veered around making a half circle, watching it. He seemed spooked by whatever it was. I thought possibly the bear was in the meadow again licking the mineral block and crossed the creek through the stand of ironweed and Jack didn't see it go out the other end into the meadow the other side of the creek. The only thing I could think of. I didn't believe a bear would take up here. Or that anything would take up with donkeys. Jenny did not seem to be spooked like Jack was, but in Jenny's non-Alpha role she lets Jack take care of lookout duties. Later in the day, driving back to the house, a deer was in the road in front of the house. It ran down the road and jumped the fence into the meadow the donkeys don't go into, full of tall grass speckled with white and yellow wildflowers. She stood knee-deep in the grass watching me park. I turned off the motor and watched her for awhile. Such a beautiful being. The essence of grace. Big donkey ears standing up, tail switching, about the size of a donkey, only slimmer. I watched until she walked out of sight behind some trees. I suspected she got separated from her baby when I drove up. I looked around for the baby walking to the house. No baby. I wondered if the deer might have made a bed in the patch of ironweed, but didn't believe Jack could be spooked by a deer. I've an idea the donkeys know all the deer that pass through and around their meadow at night and drop in to lick the mineral block.

 

 

Later, I was about to get the writing started and Allan from the next house up the road came in. We talked for a few hours, hadn't had a visit in quite awhile. His dog Martha was with him. He left soon after the stars came out. We stood outside looking at the stars and night sky continuing our talking. Martha went running in the direction of the donkey shed. I thought she was going to go after a donkey and thought: You're on your own with the donkeys--you know they kick. I came back to the house and Allan called for her. About the time I reached the door I heard Martha from the direction of the ironweed patch barking, squealing, sounding like she was fighting something that was fighting back and winning. It sounded like it was hurting her. The barking and squealing went on and on. The tussle ended and Martha ran by me, a black streak in the night, toward Allan's car. Then I was spooked. I came in the house. I was thinking maybe a big coon, but a coon would not spook Jack. The donkeys probably know the coons of the area too. The animal world comes alive at night. I'm sure the donkeys know all the critters living on this mountain. While Allan and I were sitting in here talking, he was sitting beside the open door and said he heard something that sounded like a scream. That memory brought bobcat to mind. I can't see a bobcat taking up this close to a house. My mind went to small bear. A couple days ago I found some bear scat on the side of the road in a place with a 180 degree panorama. It was from a small bear. Bears mark that place every year. This is the smallest one I've seen there. I wondered if perhaps it could be a small bear Martha tangled with. A big bear could have destroyed her, a small bear too. Whatever it was, Martha sounded like it nailed her several times. A small bear stays in my mind, a young one looking for some place in his territory safe to sleep in from time to time. 

 

 

Jack would be spooked by a bear. It's the only animal around here solitary enough to take up below the donkey shed. It is a place free of my scent. It is close to the creek. In the middle of the ironweed patch is a patch of grass just big enough for a bed.  If it is a bear, my feeling is it' is passing through, checking out the place. The ironweed patch can be seen from the high place in the road where a small bear left its territorial marker. Possibly the bear sees the donkey meadow a part of its territory, wants to get to know it, found a good spot to curl up, out of sight, close to water, meadow patrolled by donkeys. Bear already knows about the mineral block. I know where the bear comes into the meadow and goes out. I'll make no effort to fix the fence so bear cannot get through. No need for that. A bear would only attack a donkey if starving so much it's ready to risk the consequences. I don't mind a bear licking the mineral block. The bear is my neighbor. It's no danger to the donkeys. If my little spot of ground is a comfortable place for it, all to the good. It's no danger to me. It's no danger to Caterpillar. If it is a bear, I wish it the best. I want my bear neighbors to know I am a peaceable human, not a threat, bear is welcome. Whatever it is, it's welcome here. I did not hear it making any sounds. I think it was only Martha I was hearing. Leads me all the more to suspect bear. Martha would not have taken on a big bear. Maybe in a few days I'll get some signs of whatever it is. Maybe in a few days it will be gone. My feeling was that Martha chose the moment to retreat. She was not winning the battle and she sounded scared, going by the tones in her squealing characterized by intense fear, while charging anyway. Martha was perhaps being territorial on my behalf. Or she may have just found something by scent and wanted to pursue it.

 

 

Whatever it is may explain why Jack and Jenny are staying at the far end of the meadow the last few days. If it's a bear, I don't believe it will take up there. It may stay a few days and nights, maybe. I don't see it staying on and on. If it is a comfortable place for my feral neighbor, welcome. I don't have garbage cans. I throw apple cores out the front door for the squirrels. I spread coffee grounds around the rhododendron. I don't know that it matters to the rhododendron, but it seems to me like coffee grounds are better to let seep into their own namesake, the ground, become earth again, than to take them to the landfill in a plastic bag for future anthropology students to unearth and catalogue. At certain times of the night when I open the door I hear a couple of scurrying possums. They have some power in their legs they can run with and they have hands at the ends of their legs. They walk on four hands, like a raccoon. Most of my experiential images of possums are seeing them in the road at night and avoiding them. Even in the day, they mope around in the road like they don't know which way to run, and the closer you get, the more frantic they become, they take off in any direction and sometimes the wrong direction. I tend to forget that possums do anything besides walk around on highways at night. Inviting the birds, the squirrels, the chipmunks, the crows, to supplement their diets here, letting the saplings that came up grow into trees, shelters and homes for my feral neighbors, the squirrels don't run from me anymore. The birds don't fly far. It's looking like I have made a comfortable place for some critter that can make Martha sound like she was being killed and run like for her life. Whatever it is, I'm glad it's there. It tells me my home is a safe haven for the four-leggeds and the winged. It won't do me any harm. It knows I live in the barn. I'm part of its territory, too.      

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

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A LOT OF HIGH-SOUNDING WHATEVER

pulpit by tj worthington

I've finished the most recent project and fixed it in place. Made it from parts found over a span of the whole time I've lived here. Every element is something found. No part has been altered except the four wood blocks have been sanded. The little bird at the top was a gift from 45 years ago, a souvenir Christmas tree ornament from Peru. It's a memory of a friend who left the body 35 years ago. I've kept it amidst a collection of found things. I would not have included the bird in the piece if it were going to an unknown buyer. It was going across the road for my friends Lucas and Judy. The bird is in the family, so to speak. The bird is hand-painted wood, not plastic, made in Peru, not China. The box, shelf, I call it the frame, came from the old Dr Grabow pipe factory's wood-working department for making boxes and displays. I think this frame had to do with a display having to do with Dr Grabow pipes. It's made of nice cedar wood and its back is a finish plywood. It's put together with staples, which I like all the better, the very simplest construction: four pieces cut 6 inches long, two pieces cut 41 inches long, a piece of plywood for the back, done. I believe it's original purpose was to hang horizontally. I like it better vertical. This frame has been in the house at least twenty years. It stayed in the room full of my someday-I'm-gonna found objects. Now is the time for realizing the potential I saw when I picked it up and brought it home. Some are the skeletal remains of tree stumps and roots, small, easily carried, wild shapes. 

 

 

 

Next project is to go at a section of pine stump with tempera paint. Only the core remains. It stands upright about two feet. Might stand it atop a stool. Thought I might paint the flow I see in the lines and shapes in the wood. Not to anthropomorphize it or make it look like fish jumping out of water, but to celebrate its own abstract essence, use it for a canvas of itself all the way around, remembering while applying the paint that this is the core of the tree's being, it's what is left of a tree long returned to soil. I will honor it as the relic of an individual tree that once lived. I see trees in the world of plants as the fully individuated plant form. This next piece will celebrate the tree's individual essence. Now is a good time to gather the found things and play with the potential I saw the day I picked up each one. I'm bored of painting inside the lines. It feels, anymore, like filling in the spaces in coloring books. It's a skill. Now I want to bring together art objects I've found along the way, old wood in the forest, even things found at the dump. I have a piece of wood beside me on the left. It is a chip of wood maybe four inches long, about two inches wide. One side is old and fencepost gray, the other side is the inside of the wood where it was ripped by a splitter. This piece broke free and fell into the bed of the pickup unnoticed while somebody was cutting firewood. Wood unloaded, taking the week's trash to the dump, sweeping out the back of the pickup. Within the hour, TJ backs up to the unloading place, went to unlock the trunklid and saw this chunk of wood at my feet, one side old and weathered, the other the raw interior, totally different texture, yin and yang of the same thing. It has found a place among the rocks I stack. This moment it has a small round rock on top of it, and it is standing on a largish white rock that is standing on a smaller black rock on top of a square block of wood. It's good for stacking. It has the earthy color of the rocks, just a different shape, and two sides.

 

god the mother

 

I like using things anybody else would throw away, or already has thrown away. This dark brown tree branch with the two arms upraised was found I don't remember where. It was already old and dry when I found it. By now it is dry to the bone. It soaked up the first coat of tung oil. Before the tung oil it was gray, old gray wood. Two coats of tung oil and it turned to coffee color. I loved it. Of course, goddess would be black. Original mother would be a black woman. I've seen this piece of wood hundreds of times looking for something else. It has been floating about waiting for its day. I felt celebration in it, like Ruth Schowalter's Jubilee pictures of joyous soul in celebration. I wanted it to be an upward feeling. The day I held it to the rectangle of cedar frame, it felt like a puzzle piece fell into place. I wanted the arms to rise up from the top of the frame, and they did, almost a reference to Minoan bull horns. I wanted something between the hands. I thought of a ball first. A little too cliché. I saw the painted bird suspended from a copper wire like a child's toy. My mind immediately took it for a reference to Jerzy Kosinskis's novel, The Painted Bird. Here, in this piece, the bird feels more to me like the lightness of life, the individual soul, goddess/god playing with it like a mother with a baby. I don't mean for any of these allusions and references to appear so that somebody else would see them. They make a story for me in the creation that helps me feel the flow of the piece, that pulls all the parts together into a whole. The flow of the piece, the feeling in it, is for the viewer. The other is back stage, the mechanics of it. I think of these three rectangles something like individual images like tarot cards that have no established meaning; you interpret the image's meaning for yourself. Like a totem of three images. I have my own interpretation. Everyone who sees it will find their own meanings for the images. Or not.

 

god the father

 

Next is god the father. He may look like somebody in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Who is to say God looks like he was born in Norway? Thor maybe. Krishna told Arjuna if he could see Krishna as he really is, Arjuna could not survive the experience. Who is to say god the father doesn't look like a knot in a log? Who is to say god the father can be seen? Anything visible is a representation, a symbol, a likeness. I figure if I'm going to represent God visually, physically, it could be everything and it could be nothing. I can pick any old thing. A knot in a log. It's an image of the growth process, evolution, life, spirit, god. Not looking for logic. Looking for association. Even that doesn't matter. I like this representation for looking like Confucius with a chicken head. Like there is Hanuman the monkey god, I've an idea this whiteman God that Michelangelo and John Milton articulated is the whiteman god. Pictures of Jesus made in Mexico are very different from ones made in Austria. Buddhas made in India are very different from Buddhas made in Tibet, Thailand, Japan. We so obviously shape the image of God as a projection of ourselves, you see Jesus pictures in cheap frames in discount stores, a white American guy in a red, white and blue gown. I can't completely de-anthropomorphize God; scriptures do say we are made in God's image, whatever that means. It suggests some anthropomorphic resonance for me, though I don't know how much or in what ways. In the rectangle at the bottom of the totem images is a man, possibly a preacher, leaning on the pulpit praying. The maple squares are like talk balloons in cartoons, though without words. They are like sticky-paper notes, statements with no words. God speaks in silence.    

 

praying man

 

 

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